In a land with the brightest people, industrious people, resourceful people... in a land with trillions of dollars of natural resources... in a land with the reserve currency for the entire planet, there is absolutely no reason we should be coming up on the short end of the stick when it comes to trade. Our leaders have been selling our birthright to enrich themselves.
Trade can be mutually beneficial, but it does not work when we over regulate ourselves and do not require our foreign competitors to operate under the same standards. Arbitrary minimum wages (and all of those union wages that are tied to them) drive up the cost of making things here. This is directly tied to heavy tax burdens to support unearned entitlements which makes the cost of living too high to work for wages below a certain threshold. (There are times when not working pays better than working.)
And we must demand that our trade partners, like China and India, enforce treaties that protect our intellectual property rights.
Amen.
You know how there's an army of people living off of the advancement of "global warming"? This is a good comparison of what has happened to TRADE.
But get out of the World Trade Organization on DAY ONE. Cancel and re-negotiate all agreements and NGOs involved in trade. Begin again except this time with the USA's interest FIRST. The left will go nuts---more nuts than they do on global warming issues.
That will immediately go a long way toward levelling the playing field.
Get rid of everyone in the Department of Commerce involved in trade, replace with people who have never worked for government but are business experts. Look closely at doing away with the Dept of Commerce and if it has any useful functions put them under some other department.
As someone noted above, the trade crime syndicate is about redistributing US wealth to the third world with liberals getting a huge slice off the top.